t
and noble character was forged on the anvil of life. Death was the
weapon which forged greatness of soul. Death cannot destroy what death
has created. That could only happen in an insensate world. What is
it--death--but just this--the slave of immortality?"

If I could only write it down as the Professor spoke, if I could only
make you see his eyes glowing with little darts of flame as he saw the
whole world transformed into a mighty workshop in which the "alchemy of
Providence" is transmuting the soiled substance of our humanity into
living souls (over whom death can have no dominion) fashioned for
heavenly destinies--then you, too, would believe. Since that day my
old friend has not spoken a word about the "waste of the flower of the
race."

***

The house with the drawn blinds stands at the cross-roads, and I must
come back to it. What is it that has happened to him who lies in a
nameless grave in France? The opportunity for winning glory and
earthly fame did not come his way; he just laid down his life along
with hundreds of thousands more. He has taken his place among the
undistinguished dead.

"O, undistinguished dead,
Whom the bent covers or the rock-strewn steep
Shows to the stars, for you I mourn--I weep,
O, undistinguished dead.

"None knows your name,
Blackened and blurred in the wild battle's brunt,
Hotly ye fell with all your wounds in front.
That was your fame."

Not a line in the records of time for him. But there are other
records--those of eternity. He has lost nothing of the thrill of life.
He is being borne on that tide of self-surrender and heroism which has
flowed through the ages, and bears those who embark on it to the very
feet of God. He would not himself have it otherwise. "It is better
far to go out with honour than survive with shame," wrote a comrade
from the trenches, now united with him in death. There is a place for
sorrow in our land, but its place is by the hearth-stones of those
whose sons choose to survive with shame. He has taken his place among
those who, unseen, are leading on the embattled hosts of his race to
victory. He has discovered the treasures in store for the brave and
the true. When, amid the flutterings of flags and the shouting of the
people rejoicing in their deliverance, the great army will return home
at last--he, too, will come.

At Kobe, when the bugles were welcoming the victorious Japanese home in
189